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Behind the So-Called “Energy Crisis”

by Chang Chien

THE major capitalist countries are going through a serious “energy crisis.” The oil supply shortage has caused production and living conditions to be affected by a “petroleum shock.” Prices are soaring in step with oil prices and stocks are falling in the face of bleak economic prospects. International political and economic relations also have been influenced by the “energy crisis.” The situation is being widely discussed. Some bourgeois newspapers and journals abroad blamed the “energy crisis” on an “exhaustion of energy resources” while others absurdly reproached the Arab people with using oil as a weapon. These assertions which evade the heart of the matter or shift the responsibility on to other people are simply designed to create confusion and mislead people.

What is it really all about?

The current “energy crisis” takes mainly the form of an insufficient supply of oil. While on the surface it may be a question of natural resources, in reality this is absolutely not so. The world’s energy resources, including those of the main capitalist countries, are plentiful. Furthermore, with the development of production and the steady rise of human knowledge, people are discovering and will continue to discover new sources of energy. In essence, the “energy crisis” gripping the capitalist world is a reflection of the crisis of the capitalist system, an outcome of the sharpening contradictions within the capitalist-imperialisi system, and a result of the monopoly capitalists’ ruthless exploitation and nefarious plunder of the people at home and abroad; today, it is also a direct result of unbridled foreign expansion and rivalry for world hegemony by the two superpowers, U.S. imperialism and Soviet revisionism.

Under the capitalist system, “production of surplus-value is the absolute law of this mode of production” (Marx, Capital). The nature of the monopoly capitalist class is to seek fabulous monopoly profits. In exploiting energy resources, the capitalists do not consider the rational use of natural resources but only seek maximum profits. The decrease and increase of the various energy resources often depend on the amount of profit they give. Once the main source of energy, coal was known as the “food of industry.” Today, though there we still very rich deposits of coal, the industry in general has declined in the leading capitalist countries. Even in the United States, which has the biggest reserves, coal accounts for only one-fifth of its energy production. The reason is that as it is much more profitable to exploit oil than to mine coal, the capitalists have, therefore, preferred to set coal aside. Although, oil c also be extracted from oil shale and oil sand, they have not been exploited proprely, because the capitalists are not interested; they find that extracting oil from shale and sand is less profitable than direct oil exploitation and therefore cannot satisfy their ravenous appetites.